Winter Wonderland Is Slushy Up Close

JAKE IN LAKE

Ever look at the snowy scenes on a Christmas card and say "I wish I lived there"?

There are real places like that. I just returned from one, and I have a message for all of you who think you're missing something: Don't waste your envy.

Those winter wonderlands look a whole lot better on cardboard than they do out a bus window -- especially if it is a side window and it happens to be temporarily on the leading edge of your vehicle. "Front," "rear" and "side" are iffy concepts when there's an inch or two of fresh ice on one of those goat paths Coloradoans like to refer to as "roads."

How come you never see anybody on a Christmas card putting chains on a car? Or chopping that wood that makes those little cabins so cozy? Or burning up nine days worth of the Denver Post trying to get a fire started? Ask Grandma how romantic that snow is the next time she dials 911 and the dispatcher says "We'll try to get there by Wednesday."

Meanwhile, enjoy your mildew and count your blessings. We made the right decision moving down here.

Did that sound bitter and un-Christmaslike? Sorry. Those notes were written in a Colorado airport while we were waiting on our delayed plane that was replacing our previously two canceled planes that were covered with snow in some other tundra.

While I wouldn't want to live in that slushy mess, it sure was nice to visit. And it is a lesson in how much looks can be deceiving.

You take kids for example. You see enthusiastic, bright, well-behaved young people and it just lifts you up and you want to be around them.

But kids are just like winter. They look good in pictures, and they're great to visit, but if you lived in one of those little heads you might find the roads get pretty icy at times.

Last Saturday I was sitting in the Strater Hotel in Durango, Colo., with two of the kind of children you see on Donny and Marie specials.

The offspring of a University of New Mexico professor, the little boy was an incarnation of Opie, and the little girl could have been the missing Olsen triplet. They were bright-eyed, rosy cheeked and enthusiastic about drawing pictures -- every teacher's dream.

We did a few drawings with me teaching: a cowboy, a truck, a snowboarder and a skier. They were fantastic kids, bright and eager to learn.

I was their hero.

Then I asked if there was anything special they would like for me to draw. They turned two pairs of angelic little eyes set in two perfect little faces toward me and responded like this: "Draw me killing him with a gun!" she said, pointing at her little brother. He said "Draw me running over her with a truck! No, wait! Draw me hanging her!"

They had several other ideas, most of which involved hacksaws, axes, rabid dogs and caldrons of boiling oil. Somehow we went from the Waltons to the Addams family in a snap of the fingers. It was disconcerting.

Teachers deal with this kind of stuff all the time, which makes it even more remarkable when you see them doing special things with kids.

For example, Lynn Bain, of Tavares Elementary School, put on a production of The Nutcracker last week with, get this, 80 second-graders and more than 100 fourth- and fifth-graders in a chorus.

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY children! After being around just two, I palpitate at that prospect.

It is a miracle of fishes-and-loaves proportions if you can get 180 children from one room to another without a bloody nose, a skinned knee, misplaced lunch money, a shoving match and at least four lost shoes, let alone attempting a ballet with them. I'd rather try to teach goldfish to line dance.

I missed the Tavares spectacle because I was sitting in a Colorado airport watching airplanes ice skate, but teacher Kristie Walker filled me in on some of the details.

"The Christmas Tree Angels glided with such grace and dignity that everyone in the audience sat up a little straighter and held their breath," she wrote.

Apparently fourth-grade teachers are not above a bit of sarcasm now and then.

"The enthusiasm of the Russian Dancing Bakers caused their hats to come right off their heads and miraculously settle back in place," she continued. "One of the mice was so enthralled with the death scene that he forgot to die when the others did. When he realized he was the only live mouse, he expired with great drama -- to the delight of the crowd."

One can only imagine.

Let me tell you something I have garnered from my vast life experience: nobody puts on a production like this with 180 children for their own personal enjoyment. Figure in somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 parents with egos and agendas and their own ideas about who ought to be a Sugarplum Fairy and who ought to be a dead rodent, and you can see this is real work.

But if it's not ABCs or arithmetic, why do they do it? Why go to the trouble?

Let's let Walker answer that one. She wrote: "In the midst of national and county school system turmoil, joy fills the hearts of children, parents and staff. None of the children will ever forget the experience or the music."